Another Big Sham in the Big Apple

With all their public awareness campaigns, you’d think the anti-fat warriors in New York City’s government could keep their so-called “good” and “bad” foods straight. But as the New York Post reported on Tuesday, the city’s Health Department has been handing out free coupons to fast food restaurants, even while the government was demonizing the foods they serve:

Maybe fatty foods aren’t so bad after all. While Mayor Bloomberg was banning trans fats and requiring chain restaurants to post calorie counts, his Health Department was dishing out free coupons to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken, The Post has learned. Since 1993, eight years before Bloomberg took office, the agency has been giving out $5 vouchers to the fast-food joints…

As one former city employee told the Post, “The hypocrisy is that the city launches a campaign, as you well know, of making restaurants list calories and all that, while at the same time they themselves are proliferating free McDonald’s incentive cards.” (The same calorie labeling, by the way, which a study released last week found to be completely worthless.) Of course, this isn’t the first case of mixed messages coming from the City’s self-anointed food police. The government’s sodium naysaying hasn’t deterred Mayor Mike Bloomberg from pouring salt on his own bagels and pizza. Hizzoner was also busted eating Cheez-Its, a snack that contains trans fats, during the city’s vicious campaign to ban those same fats from restaurants. And as for the city’s recent anti-soft drink campaign? Well, let’s just say that the Health Department’s own headquarters does a brisk business in soda vending. It makes us wonder, “What next?” Perhaps Thomas Frieden will be snapped smoking like a chimney. Or some intrepid New Yorker will spot Marion Nestle in a hot-dog vendor’s lunch line. Stranger things have happened.